Editor's note: This story has been changed to reflect that Mark Gelband's mother passed away when he was 23.

In 2009, Boulder resident Mark Gelband threw himself into the middle of a contentious debate about whether the City Council should limit the size of houses in the city.

"I got into that debate because I bought a small house in a really nice neighborhood on a corner lot," he said. "I spent a lot of time learning about the city code. There were so many things in the city code that just didn't make sense to me."

The Camera is profiling each of the 13 people running for Boulder City Council this fall. Profiles will run every day through Sunday. See video interviews of each candidate and full questionnaires at dailycamera.com/election .

Gelband joined the group "Leave My Home Alone," and quickly became an outspoken opponent of the city's housing regulations.

"Through the house-size issue, I got to understand what I feel is a very small group of voices that control the political discussion in Boulder," he said.

He later applied for positions on the city's Board of Zoning Adjustment and Planning Board, but was rejected both times.

Now Gelband is taking his activism to the voters in his first run for the City Council.

Gelband, 46, is a father of three who works as a communications specialist for the payroll and benefits services office for the University of Colorado system. He bills himself as a voice for Boulder's younger, working-class population.

"I think the group that's running our show don't really understand the perspective of what it means to be a young, working person in Boulder," he said.

Gelband, the middle of three brothers, grew up in Miami. He said that his father, a holocaust survivor, and mother, who died from cancer when he was 23, have been major influences on his life and personality.

"I think it made me even more sensitive toward others," he said.

Mark Gelband

Gelband said he traveled the world in his 20s, and met a couple in Southeast Asia who invited him to live and work on their ranch in southern Colorado.

He eventually made his way to Boulder, where he earned a graduate degree in writing and poetics from Naropa University. He taught college-level English before moving into corporate communications.

'Chronic vagrancy'

If elected, Gelband said he would take on what he called the city's problem with "chronic vagrancy."

"I think that we have created a cottage industry in Boulder by attracting chronic vagrants to our town," he said. "Boulder has become known as the Club Med of homelessness."

He said the city needs to distinguish between the "transitionally homeless" and people who are "chronic transient vagrants."

Gelband said people such as Greg Harms, executive director of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, have "propagated the cottage industry of homelessness in our town."

Harms said he disagrees with Gelband's take on the city's homeless population.

"I hear that now and then, that Boulder offers too many services for the homeless population," Harms said. "But I hear that everywhere that I go. When I go to San Francisco and when I go to Washington, D.C., it seems every community offers too many services and is attracting too many people to their communities."

Gelband described himself as a "hardcore environmentalist" who produces more electricity than he uses via the solar panels on his home. He said residents should be given incentives to make those kinds of changes instead of spending millions of taxpayer dollars to start a municipal utility.

"I believe that change starts at home," he said.

He also said he'd take on the city's zoning to allow for "more diversity of housing."

'Prohibition doesn't work'

Records with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation show that Gelband was arrested by the South Park County Sheriff's Department in 1992 for possession of dangerous drugs. Gelband said he possessed 3.4 grams of mushrooms at the time.

He also admitted to being arrested at a University of Miami football game in 1987 for "smoking a joint at the Orange Bowl."

He said he does not have a drug problem.

"I don't use any drugs or alcohol and haven't for a long time," he said.

Asked about the city's policies regulating the medical marijuana industry that's cropped up in recent years, Gelband said he likes the rules that restrict how close dispensaries can operate to schools. And he said some of the advertising for the drug is "over the top."

But he said he is a proponent of legalizing marijuana -- because "prohibition doesn't work" -- and said the city has added too many layers of "legislative rigmarole" on the industry.

Knights pick up first playoff win since '14BOULDER — This year's Fairview boys basketball team sure is full of surprises.
After losing five of their first eight games, the Knights rebounded to finish the regular season on a 13-2 run and found a way to win the Front Range League regular season championship. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story